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Just a hundred years ago, Havana was the scene of a resounding musical revolution that would change the taste of an era. The twenties were beginning and Cuba was still living the dream of the sugar boom , money was pouring in and high society was building palaces and hiring figures like Caruso to perform in its theaters, while in the halls and dance academies of the capital the elegant danzón had no rival. The son, who had been born at the end of the 19th century in the eastern hills, was viewed with reservations and considered to be low-class people, but at that point the Habanero Sextet appeared dressed to the nines and turned the scene upside down, driving people crazy. the dancers.
The group arose from the breakup of the Oriental Quartet, which at the end of the previous decade cultivated with some success the son montuno made in the Eastern way, with a tasty but somewhat rudimentary rhythm. Fogueados in the warm sound of those primitive sounds, the composer and guitarist Guillermo Castillo, the tres player Carlos Godínez, Felipe Neri in the maracas and a leading singer named Gerardo Martínez, nicknamed El Príncipe for his impeccable way of wearing his suit and tie , founded an innovative sextet that would break that magical year of 1920.
"With the Septet Habanero began the reign of son", sentenced Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier
Along with them, other musicians of respect, accompanied by instruments up to that time little valued for their "folkloric" status, such as the bongos, the botija, the maracas and the clave, inseparable escorts of the guitar and the tres, in a short time they were they would take over the musical scene by making a genre fashionable that swept all classes and unseated danzón.
The sextet soon replaced the x with the p and became a septet, introducing in 1927 a trumpet that for years would be that of the virtuoso Félix Chapottín, imposing a unique format and way of interpreting popular music that would make history. "With the Habanero Septet the reign of son began," declared Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier, who was also a scholarly musicologist. According to the Cervantes Prize, the Habanero had the merit of being the first to jump over the established barrier in the 1920s without complexes, helping to transform “the taste of an era”.
A century later, with a repertoire of more than a thousand songs in the backpack, the group has a lineup of worthy heirs, young and old, of those mythical pioneers. Three of them are on the venerable eighty-year-old chariot, the singers Digno and José Pérez, also known as Cheito El Resbaloso, and the tresero Felipe Valdés, current director of the septet, whom, due to the heartfelt way of performing his solos, his companions They call Felipe El Sentimental. Valdés assures that taking the reins of a group with this past is a “great responsibility”, but, he clarifies, “a responsibility that is enjoyed”.
"This music is very enjoyable, gentleman," explains the tresero during an interview held in July in Havana. To pay tribute to the group's 100 years of life, Felipe and his “blacks” have just finished a double album with 27 songs that review the great hits of the Habanero and that they will present “as long as the damn pandemic allows”. "Nothing is easy in this life", Valdés philosophizes, after remembering that a century ago "it was not easy either, since the consecration of the son cost his own thing".
The great Cuban musicologist and poet Sigfredo Ariel, who for years interviewed the most veteran and wise soneros, recalled that in order to unravel the small skein of social preventions that existed around this genre, on more than one occasion the Septet ended its performances with fines and at the police station. However, his style became so strong - combining in a new way rhythm and harmony with deep and at the same time catchy texts - that from the beginning the group had supporters who got him out of trouble. “El Habanero was the first group to appear on stage in full uniform. They were full stop, everyone adored them. Even when the son was frowned upon and the police persecuted those who played the bongo, the Septet always had powerful godfathers who took it out of the bivouac, the old men claimed, ”Ariel used to say.
Advisor to the Wim Wenders film Buena Vista Social Club , based on the musical phenomenon that swept through the nineties by rescuing old traditional Cuban music, Ariel laughed when the Habanero was ignored. They, he maintained, were the ones who before anyone else played and sang the son "in the habanera way," that is, polishing it and stylizing the most rudimentary character of the oriental son, even "from the days when the group had not yet trumpet". No other sonero group made so many records in their time. "The first, when there were still no microphones and the sound was collected through a cardboard funnel," recalled Sigfredo, who died just a few days ago to the pain and misfortune of lovers of good Cuban music. “The sounds of yesteryear did not last only three minutes, as they were imprinted on the hard grooves of slate records, since phonographic plates were not enough for more. Actually, live they didn't end as long as people danced ”, said Ariel.
El Septeto was the first group to record a son in the RCA Víctor studios in New York. It was Damn shyness, on October 29, 1924, and after that the Septet would return to the United States on numerous occasions to record successes that last until today, one of the most important was A la loma de Belén, and also Yo no tumbo cane or the melody of Manuel Corona Aurora, with the famous montuno added by the Habanero of “corporal of the guard, I feel a shot”, which became as well known as the song. Fascinated by the sounds of the Habanero, even the great composer Ernesto Lecuona wrote for them Se fue and Andar, andar , both recorded by RCA Víctor in the 1920s.
The son was gaining space, the sextets and septets were consolidated and some that marked an era appeared, such as the Nacional, by Ignacio Piñeiro, or that of Alfredo Boloña. But the Habanero was crucial to the success of the son and its internationalization. With Tres linda cubanas they won an important national competition and several awards (in 1925 and 1926), and in 1929 the Habanero brought the son to Hollywood for the first time in the filming of Hell Harbor, directed by Henry King.
In the 1940s and 1950s, as musical tastes changed and many groups included new instruments — keyboard, tumbadora, güiro, various trumpets — so did the Habanero. Little by little the Septet went out of fashion, although it never disappeared.
To talk about the fabulous history of the Habanero, days before the misfortune of the coronavirus settled in this world, Sigfredo Ariel took this journalist to a concert in the old National Cabaré, where one of the group's many peñas operated. The performance began with the same elegance and introduction as a century ago: “Here it is, Septeto Habanero. Melodious here it is… ”.
"As the son there is nothing"
In one hundred years the Septeto Habanero has had numerous directors and different formats. Born of a quartet, it was first a sextet, then a septet (when a trumpet was introduced in 1927) and at the time when the ensembles became fashionable, it changed its name to Conjunto Typico Habanero and new instruments were added at various times — keyboard, tumbadora, güiro and tres trumpetas—, although with time it returned to the original formation. "As the son there is nothing," affirm the 'blacks' of the Habanero, who express their pride for having kept alive among young people the legacy of this genre that since 2012 was declared Cultural Heritage of Cuba. And more would have to be, because the son and its instruments transcended borders and influenced other musical genres, reaching their mark on salsa, jazz or pop.